Guy Reams (00:01.646)
This is day 48, chimes of freedom. Every hundred years or so, it seems the world produces a poet that represents the soul of an entire social movement. It seems that Baton was passed to Bob Dylan, the famous folk singer turned rock legend. When I grew up, I disliked Bob Dylan, but then one day I was traveling on a long road home and could only get one radio station. The station had an interview with a historian catalog
cataloging social movements in the 1960s. One segment featured Bob Dylan, and so for the first time I actually listened to one of his songs. From that point on, I became a fan of both the words but also his music. My absolute favorite is called Chimes of Freedom, which Dylan supposedly wrote while on a road trip across the country. They say he was heavily influenced by the tragic French poet Arthur Rimbaud and his use of symbolism.
That may be true, but regardless, the feeling depicted by two people ducking into a doorway while taking shelter from a lightning storm is an incredible and genius way of expressing what a country based on freedom means for those that less fortunate. This is the next poet in my list this week of poets that I am grateful for. Chimes of Freedom by Bob Dylan. Far between sundown's finish and midnight's broken toll, we ducked inside the doorway's thunder when crashing.
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds, seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing. Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight. Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight. And for each and every underdog soldier in the night, and we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing. Through the city's melted furnace unexpectedly we watched, with faces hidden as the walls were tightened.
as the echoes of the wedding bells before the blowing rain dissolved into the bells of lightning. Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake, tolling for the luckless, the abandoned and forsaked, tolling for the outcast burning constantly at stake, and we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing. Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail, the sky cracked its poems in naked wonder.
Guy Reams (02:25.751)
that the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze, leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder, striking for the gentle, striking for the kind, striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind, and the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time, and we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing. And the wild cathedral evening, the rain unraveled tales, for disrode faceless forms of no position,
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts, all down and taken for granted situations. Tolling for the deaf and blind, tolling for the mute, for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute, for the misdemeanor outlaw chained and cheated by pursuit, and we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing. Even through a cloud s white curtain and a far-off corner flared, and the hypnotic splatter mist was slowly lifting.
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting. Tolling for the searching ones on their speechless seeking trail, for the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale, and for each unharmful gentle soul misplaced inside a jail, and we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing. Starry-eyed and laughing as I recall when we were caught, trapped
by no track of ours, of ours for they hang suspended. As we listened one last time, as we watched with one last look, spellbound and swallowed till the tolling ended. Tolling for the aching, whose wounds cannot be nursed, for the countless, confused, accused, misused, strung out ones and worse, and for every hung up person in the whole wide universe, and we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.